As traffic improved, we saw a better comp sales trend, better digital sales and a dramatic improvement in discretionary categories. On the operating margin line, our business delivered dollar growth of nearly $2 billion last year, well beyond our initial guidance of $1 billion or more. This was driven by a rebound in our operating margin rate from historic lows in 2022, a year where we faced unusually high markdown rates, sky high freight and transportation costs and rising rates of inventory shrink. Last year as the team managed inventory really well, markdown rates improved dramatically and we saw a huge reduction in freight and transportation costs, more than we expected as we entered the year. Healthy inventory levels also helped our operations.
Without the need to manage overfilled back rooms, store teams were able to flow product onto their sales floor more easily and increase their focus on guest facing work. Similarly, our supply chain facilities were able to operate more smoothly without the necessary labor hours and extra touches required to manage overly full buildings. Last year, we also benefited meaningfully from the efficiency efforts we launched about a year ago. When we began this work, we said we expected to realize $2 billion to $3 billion in permanent efficiency gains over a three-year period. And with the first of those three years behind us, we continue to feel very good about our progress. More specifically, we estimate that these efforts delivered savings of more than $0.5 billion last year, helping to offset other profit pressures, including the deleveraging effect of a soft top line, continued investments in paying benefits for our team and higher inventory shrink.
And finally, last year we continued to benefit from our Roundel ad business which grew more than 20% in a year when we were facing challenging trends on the top line. Altogether, last year’s profit performance led to growth in our GAAP and adjusted EPS of nearly $3 or just under 50% compared with the prior year. In addition, cash from operations more than doubled from $4 billion in 2022 to $8.6 billion last year. And finally, after tax return on invested capital expanded by well over three percentage points from 12.6% in 2022 to 16.1% last year. Before I include my recap of 2023, I want to provide an update on inventory shrink, which includes the impact of retail theft. Last year, consistent with expectations, shrink cost increased more than $500 million compared with 2022 representing about 50 basis points of incremental rate pressure.
Even more notable, compared with 2019, shrink costs have reduced our operating margin rate by a cumulative 1.2 percentage points over a four-year period. Happily, we’ve seen some encouraging trends recently resulting from both the actions we’ve taken and the community efforts we’re seeing across the country. I wanna pause and give a quick shout out to our assets protection and information security teams who are working around the clock to protect the safety of our team and our guests. I’ll add, however, that because it’s a lagging metric, we’re planning for shrink rates to remain approximately flat in 2024. So now with last year in the books, I want to briefly pull back the lens and look back over the last decade, which is a very long time in retail.
This will help to highlight the journey we’ve been on and the capabilities we’ve developed, serving as the foundation for the next decade of profitable growth. As you all know, the last 10 years were a time of rapid change in retail. This led to some sluggish results at Target in the early years as our business faced some significant challenges. Those periods were followed by rapid progress in later years based on the steps we took to address those challenges. Let’s start with the top line. In 2013, our U.S. business generated about $71 billion in sales, while 2023 sales were about $34.5 billion higher, representing an average growth rate of about 4% per year. Breaking down that growth by channel, about $16.5 billion occurred in our stores while digital sales grew by another $18 billion becoming nearly 13 times larger over that decade.
Within our digital sales, same day services which didn’t exist 10 years ago accounted for $12.5 billion or 70% of our digital growth between 2013 and 2023. On the bottom line, our adjusted EPS in the U.S. grew by an average of about 7.6% per year from $4.29 in 2013 to $8.94 last year, while GAAP EPS from continuing operations grew slightly faster. On top of those EPS gains, our per share dividend grew at an average rate of 10.7% per year from a dollar $1.58 in 2013 to $4.36 last year. I’d note that these bottom-line returns were delivered during a decade in which our operating profitability experienced a meaningful amount of compression from a 6.7% operating margin rate in 2013 to 5.3% last year as we experienced significant pressure from inventory shrink and higher digital penetration.
Going forward, we expect to offset at least a portion of this decline over time as we work to achieve an optimal and sustainable operating margin rate. Turning to capital deployment, our priorities have remained consistent for decades, so I’ll briefly reiterate them here. We first look to reinvest capital in our business in projects that meet our strategic and financial criteria. Second, we look to support the dividend and build on our 52-year record of annual increases in the dividend per share. And finally, we deploy any excess cash after these first two uses to repurchase shares within the limits of our middle a credit ratings. Over the last decade, our operations generated just over $67 billion of cash. And during that time, the lowest level of any single year was still more than $4 billion.
These cash returns demonstrate the durability of our business as we navigated through several challenging periods over those 10 years. They also give us a lot of confidence in our prospects for making continued productive investments in the years ahead. Throughout that entire decade, deployment of cash was consistent with our long-term priorities. Just over $30 billion was devoted to CapEx accounting for about 45% of the total. Another $14.5 billion was paid as dividends and cumulative share repurchases accounted for the remainder of just over $22 billion as we retired more than 206 million shares at an average price of about $108 all while maintaining our middle A ratings over the entire period. So now with that long term look back as context, I want to turn to what we expect to achieve over the next 10 years beginning with the top line where we’re focused on three separate growth drivers, comparable sales, new stores and other revenue.
Comps are expected to be the primary source of growth with increases in the low to mid-single digit range in a normal year, consistent with our average over the last decade. We’ll support this comp growth with continued investments in our business, in remodels, own brands, national brands, signature partnerships and value-added services across all channels. Turning to remodels, we plan to invest in the vast majority of our nearly 2,000 store fleet over the next 10 years. Each year projects will range from full scale remodels in which we touch the entire store to more surgical investments including the addition of Ulta Beauty locations, fixture upgrades, support of our same day services and more. On top of existing stores, we’ll continue opening new locations based on the strong financial returns they generate.
As Brian mentioned, most of these new stores will be larger on average than we’ve opened in recent years. Based on the opportunities we’ve already identified, we expect to open more than 300 additional stores over the next decade, meaningfully extending our reach into new neighborhoods. By the end of those 10 years, we expect those new stores will be generating incremental sales of around $15 billion annually. Beyond our buildings, we’ll continue to focus on the well-being of our team members who enable our growth and serve as the face of Target every day. As Christina and Cara highlighted earlier, the human element as exemplified by our team is a continued differentiator for Target in a world where commerce is becoming increasingly mechanized and impersonal.
Finally, over the next decade, we expect to continue seeing outsized growth in other revenue. This has been driven in recent years by our Roundel ad business, which contributed more than $1.5 billion of value to Target last year to the benefit of both gross margin and other revenue. On top of Roundel, we also expect our digital marketplace, Target Plus, to make a more meaningful contribution over the next 10 years. Putting this all together, over the next decade we expect our total revenue will grow by an average rate of roughly 4% per year over the next 10 years. If we attain that goal, our business will add more than $50 billion of revenue on top of the $107 billion we delivered in 2023. That growth will enable our business to further benefit from scale efficiencies as we continue to extend our reach in the U.S. market.
On the operating margin line, our ambition is to reach the optimal rate to maximize profit dollar growth over time. While we don’t yet know what that rate will be, we believe it will be at least as high as our pre-pandemic rate of 6%. We made enormous progress in moving back towards 6% last year and expect to make continued progress in 2024 and beyond. Once we reach that 6% milestone, we’d be happy to continue moving higher as long as we’re seeing appropriate dollar growth. For example, if we’re successful in reducing shrink over the next few years, that might support our ability to sustainably operate above 6% over time. Regarding CapEx, we don’t apply a rule of thumb to determine annual spending. Rather, we maintain a bottom-up plan and allocate capital to all the projects that meet our strategic and financial criteria.
As you’ve seen in recent years, annual CapEx will vary based on the external backdrop. And individual project investments, which naturally follow the evolving needs of the business, will vary as we snap this chalk line in a specific year. For example, while in 2022 we needed to rapidly expand our upstream replenishment capacity, We’re no longer feeling that same urgency today. Similarly, while we love what we’re seeing in our sortation centers and expect to meaningfully grow their capacity over time, the pacing of sort center investments has slowed somewhat in the near term given that brown box last mile delivery volumes declined significantly last year. When we put together all of those considerations along with our long-term growth ambitions, we believe annual CapEx will typically range between $3.5 billion and $5.5 billion in 2025 and beyond.
Regarding our second capital priority, we expect to continue growing the per share dividend over the next decade and we’ll manage the rate of annual increases with a goal of reaching a 40% payout ratio over time. As for our third capital priority, we expect share repurchases will continue to play a meaningful role in our EPS growth in years ahead. Our strong balance sheet successfully absorbed a number of powerful shocks in 2022. And last year, we made significant progress in moving our debt metrics back to appropriate levels. This sets the stage for a potential resumption and repurchase activity later this year. Altogether, we believe we can deliver high single digit growth in earnings per share in a typical year, at or above the average you’ve seen over the last 10 years.
And lastly, we believe our after tax ROIC can continue to move higher into the high teens over the next decade. So now let me turn briefly to our expectations for 2024. On the top line, we’re still planning cautiously given the consumer spending patterns we’ve seen for two full years now. More specifically, on the discretionary side of our business, even as we’ve seen improving trends over the last two quarters, overall demand remains soft as spending patterns continue to normalize from pandemic peaks. In our frequency businesses, we’re anticipating a further recovery in unit trends this year as inflation continues to moderate. Altogether, we’re planning for a modest increase in comparable sales in the 0% to 2% range for the year. Within the year, our top line will face the highest hurdle in the Q1, while over the remainder of the year we’ll be comparing over notably softer results.
As a result, while we’re looking to build on the momentum we’ve seen in recent quarters, our plans anticipate a comp decline in the Q1. After that, we’re planning for a resumption of top line growth over the remaining three quarters of the year. On the operating margin line, we expect the impact of inventory shrink will be roughly flat to last year. In addition, given our cautious top line expectations and continued investments in long term growth, we’ll likely see some deleveraging on the SG&A line. In terms of tailwinds, we’re planning for modest improvement modest rate improvement in shipping and transportation as we annualize the benefit of the lower rate contracts negotiated throughout 2023. We’re also planning for continued outsized growth in our Roundel ad business, contributing to both gross margin and other revenue.
And of course, we expect our efficiency work will benefit both our gross margin and SG&A expense rates. Altogether, in 2024, we’re planning for a modest increase from last year’s 5.3% operating margin rate as we continue moving toward our 6% goal. On the bottom line, our 2024 expectations translate to a full year range for both GAAP and adjusted EPS of $8.60 to $9.60. On first glance, the midpoint of this range represents growth of just under 2% versus 2023. However, I’d note that it’s equivalent to a mid to high single digit increase on a 52-to-52-week basis given that last year had an extra week. Regarding the first quarter, our full year plans translate to a range of $1.70 to $2.10 for both GAAP and adjusted EPS on an expected 3% to 5% decline in comparable sales.
Turning to our balance sheet and capital deployment, we continue to expect a CapEx range of $3 billion to $4 billion for the year and are planning for another strong year of cash generation. Later in the year, we’ll recommend that our board approve another increase in our per share dividend. And finally, while we don’t expect to repurchase any shares in Q1, we may be able to resume that activity later in the year within the limits of our middle A ratings. As I get ready to close, I want to pause and thank the entire Target team with a particular call out to my colleagues in finance. It’s been an honor to serve as your chief financial officer for the last four and a half years. Just as I have been, I’m confident my successor will be incredibly grateful for the leadership, integrity, passion and discipline you bring to your work every day.
Until a successor is named, I’ll continue to fully occupy the CFO role and partner with all of you on behalf of Target and our stakeholders. To my new team, I’m incredibly excited to be working with all of you. As I said earlier, our operations are already in great shape and I’m fortunate to be working with a strong set of leaders. I can’t wait to see what we can accomplish together as we build and sustain the foundation for another decade of profitable growth at Target. Thank you. Now I’ll turn it over to Brian for some closing remarks.
Brian Cornell: Michael, thank you. As we get ready to take your questions, I might get started with some of the questions I can imagine are on your mind this morning. First, are the updates we shared enough to get Target back to growth? The answer is absolutely. We’re confident that the roadmap we’ve outlined today puts our core strengths, capabilities, and points of difference to work in new ways with even greater value, relevance, ease for our current guests and U.S. consumers more broadly. This roadmap will help us meet consumers where they are to drive traffic, profitable sales growth, and long-term market share gains. Another question might be, can Target keep building on the profit improvement you put up last year? You just heard it from Michael.
Nearly $2 billion in 2023 of operating income growth, far outpacing our guidance. More than a half $0.5 billion in cost savings from our ongoing efficiency efforts, giving us a fast start on our multiyear efficiency goals, and realistic expectations for additional improvement in our operating margin rate this year as we move towards our 6% goal. Ultimately, I’m sure you’re asking, what does this mean for shareholders over time? And that brings us back to our emphasis on long term horizons and the durability of our business model. Again, you heard it from Michael. From 2013 to 2023, revenue grew by almost 50%, while earnings per share and the annual dividend more than doubled. The progress we made last year in shifting momentum of our business, defining our road map for growth, and improving our profit performance has set us up to resume share repurchase, potentially later this year.
We know that’s been an important source of shareholder returns over time. But since most of you know our capital priorities as well as we do at this point, I’m guessing you noticed that I’m ending with a priority that’s been on top of the list for decades. Simply put, investing in the right strategies and capabilities for our consumers and our business is the surest way to deliver outstanding shareholder returns over decades. As you’ve seen in the last decade, there’s a lot we can’t control in the operating environment. But we are in charge of our financial decisions and the business plans and investments that drive our performance. We know that if we perform well for consumers, their market will reward investors who are fueling those efforts.
